Want more Free / Open Source Software in Your Work Life?

If so, you should read my series (part I published today) entitled Being a Free/Open Source Software Catalyst : Part I.

My plan is to cover as much of the social components of this situation as possible. I have a lot of experiences in this arena to share. Stay tuned!
-=FeriCyde=-

Time for Linux on the Door Stop

I've written my first editorial for 2011 and Posted it on LXer.com.

It's basically a decade in review piece, and it talks very much about how Linux has not taken over the Desktop -- and that it doesn't really matter any more, because in many ways, Linux has arrived.

Enjoy!
-=FeriCyde=-

Obama back speaking to the kids!

Looks like Obama is back speaking to the school children in the US, likely in an attempt to force them into his socialist point of view. Well, that, or possibly our president simply would like to do something leadership oriented, and speak to the kids in our country, and encourage them to do their best.

Being the positive kind of guy I am, I'm pretty certain it's the latter. The former opinion was how it was being cast at about 6:30 or so this morning when I surfed past the anchors at Fox news as they told the story.

But honestly, I have a link to a letter to the editor from last years speech that sums up the situation much more clearly.

Quoting:

" Let's thank Bennett and others who had the ability to foresee Obama's school speech "as an attempt at political indoctrination of the youth ... similar to the Hitler youth movement or the Soviet Union." And let's appreciate that they took action so that the threat was averted. "

Before you get your panties in a bunch over this, bear in mind that the above text is sarcasm, and nearly a year old.

If you read it closely you'll see that the author is none other than my old man. Now you know the source of my sarcasm as well.

Dad, I love you man.
-=FeriCyde=-

How to report an unauthorized call to the FTC ...

First, if you have not done so, you should register your phone number in the "Do Not Call" national database. Kind of sad that we have to worry about such things, but lately there have been a lot of scams running that (besides soaking up valuable cell phone minutes) are potentially quite expensive and damaging.

One involves someone saying they will sell you an extended warranty for your car. I've comically accepted the calls before for entertainment value (and to understand the scam a bit). Honestly, if someone calls saying your warranty is just about to expire a lot of things should set off alarm bells. Some of my favorite responses: "This is great timing! The transmission just went out in my 1954 DeSoto! Can I buy coverage to get it fixed?" Better: "I have a 2000 Hudson Hornet... You can insure that? Awesome!" The scams are well documented and the primary offending company was recently shut down. Hopefully the people executing the scam are doing jail time now.

Another scam involves someone from "Cardholder services." I've had a few of these end recently rather abruptly -- before I could say the phrase "Please take me off your list." The more generic the call -- the more likely it's a scam. Cardholder services to what card? What interest rate range are they talking about. Do they even know who they are calling (let me answer there -- no, they're doing robo-calling through a range of telephone numbers hoping to hit a live body).

In all cases, reporting these things to the FTC is a good idea. Here's the web site:

https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx?panel=2

You'll find a link on there to also register your phone number in the do not call database.

Do your civic duty -- if you get a call like this, report the idiots and help the FTC shut them down. And if you're not pressed for time, it doesn't hurt to waste a little bit of their time (the scammers) in the process.
-=FeriCyde=-

Android Fragmentation

Disclaimer: I'm a long-time users and enthusiast when it comes to Linux -- and I own a Motorola droid.

Recently, there have been a few articles that talk of something called Fragmentation in regards to the Google android operating system. These articles talk about developer-centric problems and the general lack of stability as compared to other operating systems, such as Win Mobile and Apple's operating system for the iPhone.

This is my humble opinion: none of this crap matters to anyone but developers and technical journalists. The Android is for the most part, from what I see, unstoppable. It has recently taken the mobile operating system space by storm, spawning multiple products from multiple vendors.

It will continue to do so, despite any kind of stupid fear, uncertainty or doubt. Here are the reasons why:

1. Android phones work acceptably for the vast majority of smart phone users.
2. Unlike the strategic mistake that Apple made -- the Google android operating system is available from a host of carriers.
3. Unlike Apple, the android store is far more open to developers.
4. The operating system and the underlying development components are transparent. They are truly open in most respects compared to Apple.

Sure, developing for a moving target of device capabilities, APIs and "fragmented" operating system versions is going to suck. Sure, the interface is no where near as smooth and polished as Apple's. Sure sure sure, lot's of things compared to other proprietary vendors.

At the end of the day, the decisions that Apple made will continue to make their product the Cadillac of phones. The Droid will be the Chevy.

And the real reason it will continue to sell will be obvious to the end users: Most times, all you need is a Chevy.

Those of us in the Free/Open Source community will wax onward about why people should choose freedom over tyranny and all that important stuff that's right -- and I wish that these things mattered to a lot of people. Sadly, most people haven't a clue. At the end of the day, Apple will still have a huge market share -- but over time, I'm willing to bet that Linux (Android) will take a large or similar percentage.

More carriers, a good product, more choices, less cost. It's a simple equation. It reminds one of the bad choices Apple made in the 1980's to single-source their own hardware and sue the crap out of anyone that tried to establish anything close to a competing hardware platform. I'm not saying that mobile devices will be exactly the same as that territory -- the devices are replaced much faster and cost far less. But it sure is similar.

Fragmentation though? No one on the receiving end will really care all that much. The market physics pretty much dictate the outcome -- Android will march on, more or less unstoppably, regardless of any kind of FUD around the platform.

Because, most times, at the end of the day, you just need a decent phone that works at a reasonable price. Android definitely delivers that.
-=FeriCyde=-

Google Goggles

Rocks!

I was sitting down chatting with my Aunt and Uncle over the weekend and they were asking about features of the Android phone I'm using -- and I had recently loaded google goggles -- and hadn't tried it.

Sitting in front of me is a picture on the wall. My Aunt says something like "That picture is so old, it probably won't recognize it."

Well, conversely, that's not exactly the case -- stuff that's been around a lot, it did really well on. It instantly recognized (and brought up several links related to) a Norman Rockwell painting on a nearby calendar. It recognized a DVD I had brought over to watch with them. It was darn impressive, actually.

If you have a 'droid -- you need to try this thing. It's supposed to someday recognize plants from their leaves, and is supposed to recognize bar-code (it failed, unfortunately, at that task ever time I tried it).

Entertaining at least! Give it a whirl:
Google Goggles
-=FeriCyde=-

My Letter to my Congressman May 10, 2010

It's that time!

Time to Write Your Congressman!

Dear Mr. Boccieri,

Please fight to strongly regulate (or eliminate banking usage of) derivatives -- basically my view of the banking industry of today is that they want this form of legalized gambling so they can continue their reign as American Royalty.

Without solid regulation we're going to be back where we were in 2008 -- I've been reading about some people saying things like "we don't need to regulate, we just need to let these institutions fail. Hey -- I'm all for that, but I know that when the time comes, without some solid regulation and change, whomever is on stick flying the plane of Congress that day will very likely do what's been done in the past.

I see the bankers lobbying Congress like crazy (it's in the news today). Of course they are -- they get all of the rewards of taking risk with none of the accountability.

Please do the responsible thing here -- regulate these overpaid non-capitalist leeches while the opportunity presents itself. End corporate banking welfare. Make them accountable for the incredible damage they've done to our economy. The lack of sympathy for America is illustrated by the incredible bonuses they gave themselves this year -- basically fiddling while our country burned.

End American Royalty -- be a part of strong derivative regulatory change. Restore some sanity to the financial markets. Make banking a less risky venture for the health of America. Add some kind of regulation that ends the role of our government in bailing out these idiots when they fail to do their job (managing risk is part of the role of a financial institution, and clearly that's where they failed).

Thanks for Listening,
--Paul Ferris

Hardware for the Holidays

It started with my disgust of Xandros on Lisa's netbook...

Basically, I bought Lisa a netbook a while back and although it's capable, honestly the OS was a smouldering pile of crud for the most part. The touchpad stopped working properly, it was slow and likely someone else would have given it up for dead. Digging around a bit, it looked to be a no-brainer to put Ubuntu remix on the thing, so I set about making it happen. Seriously 30 minutes into the experiment it became obvious that the folks at ASUS are either asleep at the wheel, need their heads examined or are taking payola from Redmond. Why? Because Ubuntu remix on this netbook feels more polished and stable than any out of the box OS experience I've had to date.

And Lisa is happy so I'm happy with it. I've been able to throw a lot of extra hardware configuration at it with literally no issues. i-Pod nano [x] Check. Canon MP620 (network, wireless, no less ;) [x] Check. Digital camera [x], Scanning over the network [x] -- some of the configuration took place while she was using the darn thing (apt-get is so nice over ssh). Xandros was almost completely out of disk space. It's running at about 70% space right now and happy as a clam.

The old Kodak DC215

While looking for a memory card I stumbled across an old digital camera I had in a drawer from 1999 (my old LinuxToday days). Hmmmm. Will it blend? ,I thought, mischievously. The Kodak DC215 was dead thanks to it being dropped and the battery tray getting slightly damaged. It was a pretty decent camera in its day, though. And I just couldn't bear something with such sentimental value being tossed out when it might make a really sweet web-cam. Soooo...

It turns out that Graham Crawford's SDK for the DC210 series cameras is still available. It's last update was in 2005, built for Red Hat back in the day. I needed a serial cable for the camera. Googling around a bit, I found a pin-out -- and a matching cable that probably came with the camera. So I had a serial cable, the software, and a broken battery tray. I needed a power supply. I have a drawer where I toss old out-dated power supplies ... found a matching cable for the lug on the camera, and the power-supply for a Netgear hub was close (7.5 volts -- hey, that's near 7 volts, right ;). So, some electrical tape, the cable, a Dell PC running Ubuntu -- we're all set. 30 minutes later I'm taking photo's with a shell script.

The photo's are available via serial (albeit a bit slow). It would be nice if I could pull them off the SD card directly from the Canon network printer -- it's one of the few devices I own that still has a Compact Flash (CF) reader. Is it possible? Turns out that you can use:

$ smbclient -I [IP address of Printer] /foo/canon_memory/ " "

And the "foo" above could be anything, for what it's worth. I'm mainly interested in the utilitarian value here of being able to have a nice, easy spot place in the house where the photo cards can be plugged in and the data sucked down to the central photo repository (where they're backed up, cataloged, etc).

Broken Digital Picture Frame

It's over 2 years old, and as far as comparing to the latest digital picture frames, pretty lame. On the balance side of the equation, though, we're not (Lisa and I) heavy digital picture frame users ;)

The pictures from our latest camera simply would not load on the thing. -- for one, it has a brain the size of a walnut, so the 8 mega-pixel shots were only going to load, one at a time, sometime in 2011 -- for the first one. That is, if it could read the Jpeg file format, which for some strange reason, it couldn't. I located the factory PDF manual for the thing, and it was about as clear and concise as raw enigma machine data. So I did what any decent hacker would do -- I started looking at the difference between the Jpegs from the old camera (the one from 1999) and the new ones. It turns out to be something missing in the EXIF data, a part of the Jpeg file format. If this sounds like something you've never heard of, my guess is that you're not into digital media much. I know I wish I could forget what I've learned about it all, because it took some digging around to discover all of the nasty stuff you can do to Jpegs to make them behave.

The digital picture frame isn't huge and has a really lame display -- like about 6x4 inches with an over-square rez of something like 900x250 (yes, it's really that bad). Meaning that 320x240 would look just fine on thing. The down side is that this kind of resolution is really pretty pathetic and it's not likely to win over anyone who is looking at the pictures for detail. On the plus side, however are the following facts:

  1. We're not looking at the frame for the quality of the pixels -- just for sentiment.
  2. It has a brain the size of a walnut; 320x240 images load very quickly.
  3. With the rez of the frame, 320x240 looks about as good as anything else, anyway.
  4. You can cram quite a bit of 320x240-sized, compressed Jpegs on a 2Gig SD card.
  5. My eyesight isn't all that great up close anyway ;)

Sooo, off to the races -- could I find a way to?:

  1. Shrink our catalog of photos easily.
  2. Fake out the EXIF header such that the frame would read it.
  3. Not interfere with the normal operation of the SD card otherwise.

And the answer is, of course, with Linux, just about anything is possible. The key operating lines of a script (which ran for about 3 hours total on about 1/3 of our catalog of digital pictures) are:

        [ $DEBUG -gt 0 ] && echo From $J to $DIRNEW/$FILENEW
        /usr/bin/convert $J -resize x240 $DIRNEW/$FILENEW
        [ $DEBUG -gt 0 ] && /bin/ls -l $DIRNEW/$FILENEW
        /usr/bin/jpegtopnm $DIRNEW/$FILENEW > $P1
        /usr/bin/pnmtojpeg $P1 -exif=$EXIF > $DIRNEW/$FILENEW
        [ $DEBUG -gt 0 ] && /bin/ls -l $DIRNEW/$FILENEW

The EXIF header being inserted in the pnmtojpeg line above is completely bogus. It's not even the right resolution -- the digital picture frame simply doesn't care (Lisa's iPod nano is a different story, by the way -- it worked for all of the pictures taken landscape). The pictures ended up tiny -- 2500 pictures taking up a whopping 80 Megabytes -- literally pennies on the dollar, space-wise. This means that I can simply put the script in the root directory of the flash card and make it execute upon insertion on her netbook. Imake a directory called "DFRAME" next to the "DCIM" directory, and clone files into there. Works like a charm. I'm fairly certain that I can simply pull an EXIF header with the right proportions to fix the script so her iPod nano can show them properly.

Through all of this, the joy of having an operating system that behaves (and can run software from literally a decade ago) is something to behold.

Happy Hardware for the holidays!
-=FeriCyde=-

Flight of the Penguin, er, Phoenix

Dear Diary --It's been too long...

I'm in full-blown Phoenix mode. For those of you who wish to understand what I mean here(Reference Wikipedia):

A phoenix is a mythical bird with a colorful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet (or purple, blue, and green according to some legends). It has a 500 to 1,000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again. The new phoenix is destined to live as long as its old self. In some stories, the new phoenix embalms the ashes of its old self in an egg made of myrrh and deposits it in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis (sun city in Greek). It is said that the bird's tears contain healing abilities of pureness, and their cry is that of a beautiful song.

I'm starting a new practice around what I've done in business for the past decade or so: Changing culture and embracing Free / Open Source Software. I'm also doing a bit of recruiting and sales. This is a natural extension and progression but in many ways it's a re-birth. I'll be blogging more about Free Software (big surprise) in the near future.

My thoughts have been consumed lately on all of the things that consume a startup -- my time has been sucked into a large void in some respects, but that doesn't excuse my blogging absence (it just explains it).

In my new role I'm truly getting to know the movers and shakers in the Free/Open Source (FOSS) space. It's a wonderful re-engagement, because I was far more connected in 1999 than I have been in 2009 (that is, lately). The happy surprise for me is that, unlike 1999, the world is happily embracing FOSS -- it's all over the place now. It would be laughable for people to ask questions like "Is Linux ready for the enterprise?"

I'm sharing some of my findings from the perspective of a sales person -- I'm getting to do that kind of duty now. I get to talk to a lot of people that are pondering the FOSS question.

The question is now turned the opposite direction -- the real question is "Is your enterprise ready for Linux?" There are still some hold-outs, in other words, that still see heavy value in proprietary infrastructure. A lot of these companies are now looking at FOSS with a far more serious gaze. The money is driving the activity, unfortunately.

The "Free" in Free Software is still about the cash for these companies -- and that's a crying shame. It's sad, because it's not about the cash at the end of the day (although a serious bundle is often on the table when these choices are made). Rather, it's about liberating the IT of your company -- it's about having real choices, flexibility and freedom as it pertains to using the technological underpinnings of your business solution.

My Phoenix is an intentional "burn-down" of the old Paul Ferris. I'm far from done on the technology side, by the way -- my time has been spent doing architecture and development for the past couple of weeks, so it's not like I'm going to ever shake that ability. The bird that is rising is one of new ventures, planning and entrepreneurship -- very exciting stuff.

For those friends who've been asking -- thanks for the gentle prodding. I'll write more often and you posted.
-=FeriCyde=-

Linux on Netbooks

You'd have to be living under a rock to not have heard about the current "netbook" craze. Basically, there is not really solid definition (in my not so humble opinion) of what a netbook truly is -- my definition is this: A laptop that has superior battery life, reduced features and that is so small and convenient that it fits in your purse (if you're of the proper gender to be carrying one, or if you're purse/gender agnostic -- don't get me started on this topic).

Anyway, I bought one for my wife recently -- running Linux, of course.

Now, there's been a lot of misinformation about Linux on desktops/laptops and netbooks. It's too hard to use, it's not familiar -- it's not Windows -- people return them at a higher rate than Windows.

But, not according to Dell, it seems. There are many reasons that this is news. Dell is the quintessential user computing device vendor. They have a well recognized brand and off and on, have courted Linux on the desktop. Linux has a lower acquisition cost for a hardware vendor -- and on a $300 computing device, there isn't a lot of margin.

Barring all of that strategic schpew -- the fact is, my wife uses an Ubuntu laptop and seems to have taken to the netbook with a minimum of fuss. I use her viewpoint as an indicator of sorts. She doesn't hold much back in terms of criticism -- if it sucks I'm going to hear about it in short order. She's not a technology lightweight -- she uses facebook, email and web browsing as good or at a higher competency than all but my tightest technological contacts -- but she's not a programmer or IT type.

In short, if she can take to a Linux device without a lot of training on my part, I assume that the general public should have few to little issue.

And this describes her experience -- the Ubuntu laptop has been a terrific device, and she's used it for a couple of years now without issue. The netbook has a simplified interface, in comparison. It's an SD-based device (no hard drive) and so far so good, it has worked well.

I've always been skeptical of the claims that people can't use Linux as a network computing platform. My own experiences with my family (Mom and Dad use Linux these days as well) tell me that the market is fragmenting. I won't get into all of the technical reasons why Linux on the desktop is a good thing -- I could, and I've done so many times in the past -- all I'm going to say is that I'm happy to see that it's not hard to acquire a device running Linux these days.
-=FeriCyde=-

Ebert Discusses Discussion

Roger Ebert's latest blog posting hits upon one of my favorite topics with the strength of a sledgehammer and the aim of a laser. His main point -- that our news has degenerated into a swill of yelling and uncivil discourse. That this lack of civility has become dangerous -- especially compared to times past.

I've spent a lot of time talking on this blog about this very issue. Whether or not you agree with the likes of Keith Olbermann, Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, is irrelevant (and not the focus here). It's their technique -- their polarizing speech and the way they make the news more about propaganda than about level, balanced discourse. Our society is in danger of being polarized into groups of people that are more and more informed by people who are less and less informative. The anger is obvious. Keith O spent miles of airwave ranting against Bush. Bill O is now doing something similar -- his party didn't win, so he's going to spike the punch, that's my opinion. Spend some time (it doesn't take much effort) searching on YouTube for "shut up" video with Bill in it -- what he's doing is unpatriotic by his own measure. We're supposed to support our president, etc, etc.

I've had enough of this kind of partisan stupidity. Dialog -- quiet, carefully thought through actions, serious planning and lucid introspection of America is now in order. We're in a crisis of massive proportions, and these people and their obviously hate-mongering methods are not helping.

Roger Ebert says it better than I do. Read his blog for a really good breakdown of the present news break-down.

No, I don't know the fix to this problem. Given the fact that things like Rush and Bill sell really well these days, it's hard to imagine what fix is in order. I do know, however, that what we have is broken. Our media and the lack of local news coverage, the lack of independent voice and the popularity of junk news is a disease. We need the balanced clear voices of a truly moral news media to balance our democracy.

I shudder at the thought of a media run by the government (or even regulated). The fact is that somehow our society needs to come up with a way to pay for truly "fair and balanced" news reporting (in the strict, true sense here). The fact is that I don't want the government to do this for us. The fact is that corporate media has illustrated, really well for that matter, that they're not up to the task either.

How might this be accomplished in a democracy where free speech is supposed to be the order of the day?

Thoughts welcome,
-=FeriCyde=-

Paul Krugman and Staying the Course

If you get a chance, read Paul Krugman's latest op-ed in the New York Times.

Basically, there are people that want to call off the recovery. They're wanting the US economy to be as responsive as say, a TV remote. Sadly, it took years of failed trickle-down economics to get us here, and it's going to probably take a lot of changes to pull us out.

Paul Krugman has my respect for a multitude of reasons. His lucid insight and eloquence surrounding the economy has a strong history of accuracy to boot. This article is more of the same.
-=FeriCyde=-

A Glimmer of Hope for GM

I've blogged a lot about GM and American auto makers in general of late.

A lot of negative press, for most of that. It's only fair that I post something positive. Over the weekend, I got a chance to drive a 2010 Camaro. It was Saturday morning, and through some really strange coincidences, I have a contact at a Chevy dealer that has been keeping me posted as to when the new cars would ship.

Complicating matters, I wasn't feeling my best, so it wasn't the most pleasant time for me, but I drove out to the dealer and took a look anyway.

It was a silver V6 and automatic -- not the car I would choose, but it turns out, quite a bit to whet my appetite.

The long and short of it is this -- the 2010 Camaro is a beautiful work of art. It's everything a pony car should be and more. The V6 version lays down over 300 horsepower and everything about it was right. Drop dead gorgeous, quick, solid and the only time I've seen a GM product in real life that looked as good (in this case, better) than the prototypes I'd seen at the Cleveland auto show.

If GM can make things like this happen, pull some electric vehicles out of their past and put them back on the road and return to the creative force they were (even half of that), they can make it. This car was amazing. Of the three pony cars out now (Challenger, Mustang and Camaro), this one is the most beautiful in my humble opinion. The Challenger is a close second. I have to say that my impressions of the Challenger are similar, but that the thing is huge. It's been designed (the Challenger) to make this less obvious -- to get an idea, take a look at the size of the tires, and things begin to swing back into focus.

Bringing up the tail in terms of style, the latest Mustang is not quite there. Somethings' wrong with the back half of the car -- the prior attempt was very true to heritage, and yet somehow always kind of left me feeling like it wasn't all there from a styling perspective. The new Camaro and Challenger make it really clear what's missing.

It's nice to have choice, though, at the end of the day. Who would have expected this -- at this time, no less.

Let's raise a toast -- Here's to there being enough gas at a reasonable price in the near future to sustain some decent burn-outs ;)
-=FeriCyde=-

The Beginning or the End of the Republican Party

Rush, what a guy! He's apparently urging Colin Powell to leave the Republican Party ... along with McCain? Note that a lot of this is right off of CNN's web site. There's a lot of free press for Rush in there for a web site that's supposedly got a liberal bias. (Hint to die-hard conservatives -- when stuff like this is going on, something is fundamentally wrong with the picture). Gotta wonder, Rush -- who's going to be left in your party at the end of the day?

Even worse, the statement that Powell chose to endorse Obama was racially motivated. In case you think that this is me simplyfying Rush's words, here's a clip to watch that will make the point clear.

I read Powell's endorsement and justification with interest when it went down last year. It's anything but racially motivated. If anything, it was a lucid description of everything that I was feeling about the McCain campaign. You can hear this in Powell's own words if you're still not convinced.

Here's the deal -- Powell in the above clip is right -- he's dead on about what's wrong with the present party. What is interesting, is the stark difference between Rush and Powell.

Rush: Pretty much a person executing in units of rhetoric at high volume. His reputation be damned -- he makes money riling people up and unfortunately, wrecking the republican party at the same time. He's like a disgusting cheerleader -- never in the game, always yelling from the sidelines with simple-minded chants.

Powell: Total contrast to Rush in almost every way. Powell is commanding Military figure who has a reputation for honest, quiet and intelligent dialog. He's been on the field during some difficult moments. He's truly served our country.

I have a lot of friends on both sides of the political spectrum. Some of the more liberal ones are looking at the sad state of Rush affairs and smiling. They know that the more this continues, the smaller the party will be at the end of the day. They know that their agendas will be more likely to pass through congress and the senate (and they're calling for revenge).

As a moderate, I'm looking at this situation with a bit more distress. I'm worried that the lack of balance in our (often broken) political system will make for some serious instability. The people that follow Rush are either watching for entertainment value -- or they're true believers in the snake oil being sold.

It's like Professional Wrestling -- there are a lot of people that love to watch, even though they know it's fake. And then there are the people that really don't get the joke. I honestly believe that Rush's followers have to fall into those two categories. It's hard for me to believe that that many people can be that stupid, or simple-minded.

Rush's postulation that Powell's endorsement of Obama was completely racially motivated is simple minded. It's an example of Rush either being stupid, or maliciously defamatory. And it's a racist statement itself -- its says "Powell is lying, because he's black -- you just know it."

Part of me has to wonder if Rush is truly that stupid -- I sit in disbelief that he can be that stupid, and then I remember Occam's Razor. I have no true proof that Rush is being mean-spirited here. The simplist explanation is that Rush truly is that simple-minded.

Because anyone that takes the time to read and listen to Powell's breakdown of why he was endorsing Obama would find good reasons that have nothing to do with race, and everything to do with what's wrong with the Republican party.

The core of what's wrong is all over this blog posting -- the tendency to aim at the simple-minded and divisive rhetoric when complex solutions that require everyone's effort are required.

People like Bobby Jindal, as I've said before, aren't going to cut it for the party. The Party needs to step up and listen to the small, quiet, logical voices of its true leaders. The beginning of this change is in the nucleus of what Powell is and has been saying since before the election was over -- that to be inclusive, they're going to have to morph into something that abhors people like Rush.

And I think it's going to be a while, unfortunately, before that happens. Possibly a decade at this rate. The party will continue to shrink -- especially if idiots take Rush's advice. Given the popularity of his radio show, that's a distinct possibility. The party will eventually be very exclusive. It will be like, so exclusive that it will be made up of only loud, obnoxious talk show hosts.

I forgot, talk show hosts that talk racism with a wink and a nod. That talk about the "real" America forgetting that the real America is comprised of immigrants. The only "real" Americans here are the American Indians, if you want to get down to the demographics of the situation. The rest of us rolled into town a couple hundred years ago and started a new government that was pretty inclusive (if you don't count some slavery, land-grabbing and massacre). I'm probably not a "real" American in Rush's eyes anyway -- Puerto-Rican and Scotch-Irish in heritage, he would probably tag me as too hispanic. I seriously don't know or care -- I don't want to speculate too much because the last thing I want is to come off as loud and stupid and rhetoric-driven as Rush.

No, the potential here is for the new face of the republican party to become someone like Colin Powell. Someone who truly understands what's wrong -- who's not afraid to tell everyone to turn off the Rush Radio Raunch and move on to straightening out the party. Without that kind of balance, the party will continue the slide toward irrelevance that it is facing today. That's why I titled this posting about the beginning or the end -- it's moments like this where the vestiges of intelligent people that are truly loyal to the party can see the problem at hand with clarity.

Possibly Powell, in other words, can lead the Party back on track. The alternative (to listen to Rush, and leave) is far more damaging to the country at the end of the day.
-=FeriCyde=-

Let's Regulate Corporate Banking Welfare

CC'ing the world on my dealings with my congressman (who has responded to me dutifully in the past), John A. Boccieri:
===========================================
Congressman Boccieri,

Given the recent bail-out of financial institutions using government-backed funds, I have to raise a couple of issues and ask for your consideration of the implications as opportunities arise to address the issues at hand.

1) Bankers are supposed to manage risk.

2) Some of these people have clearly missed the mark, managing this risk. At the same time, the executive management of these same institutions were compensating themselves at a rate that most of us (the vast majority of your constituency) would consider obscene.

3) Having our tax dollars shoring up this risk is a dangerous proposition for our government.

4) They're continuing to pay themselves as if they were creating wealth -- recent measurements show that they're attempting to return their pay to pre-2008 levels.

Reference:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27krugman.html?_r=1 (Article reference is Paul Krugman's article in the New York Times entitled "Money for Nothing").

I ask you as my representative in the House to please do your part to regulate this new form of welfare. If we're going to turn the banking system into a new welfare state then there should be welfare-like compensation for the executive management. If they don't want this kind of regulation then they should find ways to be profitable and not take the money as a loan from United States taxpayers (such as you and I).

That's my request -- feel free to call anytime.

PS: Posting this on my blog as well -- just keeping you informed. I trust you as my representative and believe that true democracy requires transparency.

--Paul Ferris.
===========================================
Writing your representatives is a really good idea. I'm sharing here in the hopes that everyone reading will feel similar motivation to get involved with their government and the overall solution. Vote, contribute and protest if need be. But above all things, be informed and involved.
-=FeriCyde=-

Pontiac, the mark of Dead Car

GM is about to give Pontiac the axe. What comes to mind when you think of Pontiac? Youthful, Wide-Track, ... Sporty -- Dead?

The Pontiac brand has been targeted by GM management. It's likely going to be gone soon.

First a disclaimer: Paul Ferris isn't a fan of GM products -- I do think that new Camaro is smokin' hot though, and I'm a big fan of the Corvette -- though I'm not likely to own one simply because of the impracticality of a 2 seater in my life. Fact is that if there is anything I'm not it's a car snob. Cars are expensive. I have things I'd rather have my money doing than soaking up the remains of a BMW or some other brand of vehicle. If I want to have fun, a decent Toyota, Ford or Honda is probably going to fit the bill. I've blogged about my tastes in Mustangs and various other car-related opinions over the years. I've also made quite a few comments on GM and their deletion of brand-names.

So it is with no surprise that today I read that GM is finally doing the obviously stupid, and killing off Pontiac.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not totally in view of the GM brand management lineup here -- what I am aware of, however, is that the management of this company has to be one of two things:

• Chock full of political stupidity.
• Just plain stupid.

Dozens of reasons not to kill of brands come to mind. Think of a much reduced GM here -- one where the people that manage Pontiac and say Chevrolet are merged together into a cohesive unit of people that were the exact same size (or smaller) than the people that used to manage just the Chevy brand. In this new scenario, the Pontiac brand is sold at Chevy dealerships and vise versa.

In this new reality, GM simply manages the Pontiac brand the way that someone would manage option packages on cars. If a Pontiac branded car is coming down the line it simply gets the right badging and color options. If a car is one of the signature items for Pontiact it might get different grills and/or body panels. In some cases, the Pontiac version of a corvette, for example, or Camaro (for another obvious example -- something called a "fire bird") is manufactured. Otherwise, it's essentially a branch off of the Chevy item of the same name.

This isn't hugely different than what's been going on for the past 20 years or so. There was a time when Pontiac cars had completely different bodies, engines, transmissions. The buyers expected this kind of differentiation. The world has changed (more on all of that later). Buyers of today are not looking for the same thing they were looking for in 1969.

But GM -- wake up here. You may survive for another year doing stuff like lopping off your Pontiac leg. You're going to do it at massive cost, however, if you manage to piss off a whole bunch of Pontiac fans. I don't have to speculate much here -- likely there's a bunch of Pontiac executives that are slated to get the axe. Why GM can't pull it's head out of its collective ass and simply merge all of its executive leaders into a cohesive team that manages all brands is likely a big part of their problem.

The GM of today has to shrink in executive leadership -- let's hope that they can pick the best of the best inside of the company. Let's hope the people that stay behind are frugal, nimble and most importantly creative problem solvers -- and not simply blowing away brand names because of political infighting -- like I suspect is going on -- I don't know for sure that this is the case. If you're a GM executive insider, feel free to post some comments here or send me a private email.

The sad thing is, the GM of today has to be a completely different GM than the GM of 1959. The GM of 1959 functioned in many ways as a bunch of independent car companies. Buyers of a Pontiac or Chevy took note of the massive differences with pride. Those days are obviously gone. GM can't afford different executive leadership for all of the different brands -- but I'd argue that they still need those brands to be GM. Managing the brands shouldn't require different dealerships, assembly and so on. This is the point I'm trying to make. The fact that they're killing Pontiac says that they don't get part of their problem.

GM has to face some rather obvious glaring problems (that have nothing to do with brands) head on:

• They're no longer the manufacturing technology leader that they once were. Hybrid cars, fuel cell vehicles, lagging engine technology -- I have no doubt that they have had the jump start here from an engineering perspective. They have smart engineers, in other words, that have been in front of the competition, and probably on all of the times I just listed. They have moronic executive leadership that hasn't let the cool stuff get made -- there's a rather obvious problem they need to fix. My father and I go to the Cleveland auto show -- we see their prototype stuff. It never makes it into product form. In the mean time, a few years go by -- someone else makes it happen. This has to stop.
• Quality: GM quality is getting to be something of a joke. I have a next door neighbor that is a huge GM fan -- his wife just bought a brand new Saturn product -- and on the first day it blew an ABS sensor. I have a friend with a brand new truck -- the expensive alloy wheels look like crap. His dealership wants to replace them with "refurbished" items. His wife's brand new car has a set of headlights and grill that look like junk. And this is just me thinking of examples -- I haven't gone out to interview people or something -- these are examples that I've just accidentally came across in the past couple of weeks.
• Brand cultivation: GM needs to have its Mustang or F150. No -- I don't mean that they need the trucks to be better, or to go head to head with the Mustang on effort (that would be cool, though) -- I mean that one of the things about Ford is that they're obviously starting to get the fact that brand management of automotive products involves making the same products (with minor improvements) year after year.

  People come back for quality. They come back because their kid someday needs a car for college -- and that [brand item] served them well. The lights must be on somewhere in the company or they wouldn't be doing the new Camaro. They wouldn't be making the Corvette, Impala and Malibu. Sure -- there are times to make new brand items for people to get attached to -- those times are not to be every year or two, in an effort (I'm supposing here) to get people to forget the crappy product that the Citation or Cavalier turned into. No obvious choices for this come to mind. This is probably a core weakness; GM has not made a long-running product that gained market share and made lasting brand awareness in quite some time.

It's truly as sad day when one of your brand detractors is sitting on the fence lamenting the situation (that would be me, for the record).

A closing note here: I have real reason to be sore at GM. There was a time, early in my engineering career. I was still a student, looking for work in Warren Ohio so that I could support my family. GM didn't hire people back then at the Packard engineering facility -- it used a contractor work situation. I had to take a job at close to minimum wage working as a long term contract employee. They had a system worked out where the contract middle-men took a big portion of your salary while you worked over many years getting next to no benefits and crappy pay. All of this was eventually cleared up with a settlement for a class action lawsuit (long after I had moved on in disgust). I got to drive my 1966 Ford falcon into work and hear crap about how I should be driving a brand new GM product to help support the company (I was biting the hand that feeds, according to a couple of people, driving a 20 year old rat-bag of a car). Oh yeah, I also drove a 1974 Nova -- it was my wife's car at the time, upon occasion. When it ran.

If you wanted to switch contractors to get a raise in pay there were all kinds of "unwritten rules" to prevent true marketplace competition in the compensation department. This kept the contract suppliers happy and was in effect a reverse union situation -- workers, unable to compete for a fair wage, were kept making really crappy pay while their contract bosses made out like bandits.

I still get angry when I look back. I had a 2 year old son and we had to make seriously hard choices between food and medical care at times. All the while, the cleaning people (GM employees) were making several orders of magnitude more than we were. I sat it out, learned some valuable skills -- and left for a company that would hire me as an employee. I left for a large raise and never looked back.

I vowed at that time, never to support the company that had been so callous as to treat me the way that Packard (A GM subsidiary at the time) had treated me. The situation was compounded by the way that the employees walked around in a manufactured feudal system -- looking down their noses at the contract help like a second tier of society. They had GM car discounts, real medical benefits and a host of other reasons to feel so much better than the "contract help".

Years later, as I write this, real memories of disgust come to mind. The inefficiencies back then were obvious. My guess is that what we're witnessing these days is simply the result of a disease running its course.
-=FeriCyde=-

Public Service Annoyance.

What are the police from Brecksville doing on Route 77 North, around Mile Marker 149 doing to help make the world a safer place? Catching speeders? Sure! But what about other forms of helping the community...
View Larger Map

That's probably what the people paying their salary (the dear folks living in Brecksville, namely) like to think. Too bad they're not making the world a safer place. Too bad that's not the image that they were projecting this morning. This morning, they appeared to be simply pulling people over for speeding on the Interstate to pump up the money for Brecksville township.

Call me an idealist -- but I think of Police fulfilling the roles that my Father-in-Law, a sheriffs deputy for many years in the 70's, used to fill. In that role, he gave out tickets, sure, but most of the time he was looking to make the world a safer place. That meant helping people in need -- not just cutting tickets for passing motorists.

I don't see the Brecksville cops in that light for a simple reason. On or about 9:06 AM, Good Friday April 10th of 2009, I witnessed them (2 cars) sitting in wait for passing speeders. Oh, and there was that elderly couple, with a flat tire, within eye-shot of both of the patrol cars, broken down on the side of the road.

Yeah, it's hard to have a conversation with them -- but not at all impossible. I did manage to locate a nice email address for Brecksville. I took a couple of minutes to write a nice message to them (repeated below, for your entertainment).

Hello,

   Just wanted to say that this morning, around mile marker 
149 on 77, I saw an elderly couple fixing a flat on their 
car in the Southbound lane while I was driving on the north-bound 
lanes.  I'm writing you because two of your Police vehicles were 
in obvious eye-shot of the situation -- and obviously doing 
their usual duty (my guess: gathering speeding ticket revenue 
for your township).


   While I appreciate the safety that this regulatory 
function of your constabulary brings to the table, I would 
expect them, in situations such as this, to add some value 
in the form of community service.  Specifically, I was 
kind of saddened to see them sitting nearby and doing 
nothing.  I see the highway patrol upon occasion, helping 
others in times such as this.  Why not the Brecksville 
Police?


Awaiting your response,

Sincerely,

--Paul Ferris

I don't expect a response -- if I get surprised, I'll post it here.

Any of my readers in the Brecksville area care to comment on this? How does it make you feel, knowing that representatives of your government (I count the police in this category) are projecting this image for your beautiful township?
-=FeriCyde=-

Mister Rogers, the Epitome of Evil (to Fox and "Friends")

It's amazing how stupid you can look, when you simplify reality down to a few basic, incorrect statements, string them all together and attempt to make sense of your own nonsense. Then, to make up some air time, you sit around with some other people, who, like yourself, clearly have brains the size of a walnut. This "stupidity as a sounding board" tactic is part of what's going wrong with media today.

Seriously guys -- Mister Rogers?!? Can't you find some other villain to peg here? Mother Theresa is wide open -- why not her too? The basic gist of their argument is that Mister Rogers taught children to feel entitled. Backing it all up, some lame college study.

This is more of the same, simplistic thinking that's at the core of what's wrong with something I call "Partisan Logic" -- it's the kind of Logic whereby you can justify going after one president that blew a secretary whilst in office and lied about it, all the while thinking that invading another country while borrowing money from a hostile Communist state is just fine. Or, for contrast (I'm an equal party offender), you can rail against a gender or race inequitable system, and make arguments that sexual harassment by a President wasn't all that bad at the end of the day.

Can they seriously think that the this kind of lame, half-baked logic is a substitute for thought or basic reality? Have any of these people raised children?

Here's something to think about -- maybe turn the TV off -- that's what we did, by the way. I can't claim huge success but if crap like this Fox TV program was my Kid's only choice, I would have bought a signal jamming device in case he turned the set on one day when I wasn't home.
-=FeriCyde=-

I Wish I Didn't Know Now What I Didn't Know Then

It's a sad day when you think you're reading satire or some piece of phony humor, and it turns out that it's really an article from ten years ago in the New York Times that contains the following quote:

'I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

The article is worth reading for a host of reasons. For one, it exposes our political system and highlights that some legislators do, in fact, understand our complex economy -- even if they're unable to stop the train of stupidity that they're riding on.

Another quote from the article that's telling:

''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

That sounds like a commercial, if there ever was one, for economic destruction. Of course, my rear-view mirrors are spotless, so take all of this with a grain of salt. Remember this when someone decries the role of government and casts them as regulators holding back innovation. Remember all of this because there are a lot of people that make loud noises as great pundits that think that "simple" answers to complex questions are substitutes for history and intelligence. Remember things like the events, documented for posterity, by this article for what they were.

Hopeless, stupid mistakes by people that had all of the facts, the history and the understanding to know better, and yet they still proceeded to enact legislation that would be our downfall.
-=FeriCyde=-

More Partisan Stupidity

The latest Republican hopeful, Bobby Jindal, is going to continue a tradition:

"Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, 'Why no sir, I don't want the president to fail,' is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism," Jindal said at a political fundraiser attended by 1,200 people. "This is political correctness run amok."

What tradition? The idea that simple rhetoric and posture are replacements for true leadership.

This was attempted by prior candidates for president (mainly vice), and make no mistake, there are people that are gearing up for the 2012 presidential race with bets on Jindal.

The problem is fundamentally bigger than the above: The president-buying-public as it is, is looking for someone who can solve problems. My view is that they want a president engaged in dialog. Someone who is inclusive. Talk like the above is not inclusive -- it's disastrous. It really is un-American to wish that your president will fail.

The issue at heart that is not being addressed is that this was a game created by people like Bill O'reilly when he pontificated that people should "Shut Up" in regards to (name that tune, you un-American moron). Bill and people like him started and pushed the idea that to speak anything negative at a crucial time -- that's un-American. This is exclusive dialog -- it separates, rather than unites. At its core is a fundamental problem -- we as a nation are allowed to disagree sometimes. At the end of the day, however, we're supposed to work as a cohesive whole for the greater good. We're not supposed to wish for failure, in other words.

On the other side, Rush Limbaugh comes out after the Dems win the election and says he wants Barak to fail.

Out of control Republican pundits, in other words, have brought the biggest hope for success for the Republican party into the spotlight -- and his first order of business is to attempt to reconcile the moronic rhetoric of their pundits and talk-show egotists. He has to do this because if he doesn't, Rush and Bill are not going to support him.

What's really wrong with this picture? Rhetoric, exclusive dialog and simplistic thinking (in my not-so-humble opinion), have lost the conservatives a lot of ground lately.

Bobby Jindal, if he hopes to win the hearts and minds of the people that are going to elect him, is going to have to address the real problems in America with real solutions. He's going to have to find a way to include more people in his party. He's going to have to distance himself from the stupidity of what's running the party today -- Bill, Ann, Shawn and Rush. These people are doing real damage to the party that they supposedly want to win the presidential race.

I don't think Jindal is up to this, for what its worth. I think that there are far better conservatives up to the task -- but they're not going to get Rush and Bills support.

There is a guy right now who's engaged in real dialog with the nation. That guy obviously doesn't want to fail -- at least, that's what he's saying (and it sure looks real to me). He's an obvious problem solver. That guy has been working hard to be inclusive -- it's really obvious on a lot of fronts. That guy is our President. We have him for another 4 years.

I don't want him to fail because I don't think we've had problems this big for quite some time as a nation. I think we do need some Partisan balance to solve the problems that Barak wants to solve. I think we need more than simplistic thinking and negative, exclusive discourse to fix what we're up against. More to the point -- I think that the American people are smart enough to tell the difference, at the end of the day, between simple rhetoric and complex solutions to tough problems.

And now I'm going to do something I rarely do -- I'm going to take Bill O'Reilly's advice. I'm going to shut up.
-=FeriCyde=-